Zombie Duck
by lisa316
Summary: Few will understand this story, and even less will enjoy it. My Christmas in July gift for ITL.


_Dear Insane Troll Logic,_

_I received your wish list of prompts. While characters growing wings or getting abducted by aliens were tempting choices, I decided to grant your request to have Logan and Alec switch bodies, and I spent two months trying to make that happen. Unfortunately, by the nineteenth draft, it was still all_ "Dude, we switched bodies." "Wow, that sucks." "Yeah." "What should we do now?" "I don't know, what do you think we should do?" "I don't know. Find a way to switch back maybe?" "Yeah, ok. Hey, we're really boring for two guys that just switched bodies, aren't we?" "Word." _and in a fit of rage and frustration, my brain exploded. So I scraped up all the bits of my brain and pasted them into a Word document and you got this instead. Merry Christmas in August._

_Hugs and kisses,_

_Lisa_

**ZOMBIE DUCK!**

_(All litigious parties should consider this story disclaimed, and all discerning readers should look elsewhere.)_

**The Disturbing Preface**

Manticore was always trying to build the perfect soldier. Sure, they had managed to whip up a generation of drop-dead gorgeous people with super-human strength and intelligence, and that was all nifty and everything, but how cool would it be if they could create genetically enhanced killing machines that could fly or live under water or glow in the dark or be completely stain resistant? So the scientists became more inventive, more daring , and boy they came up with some whoppers.

Their designs became more and more irregular. They disregarded the structure of a humanoid form and introduced more varied animal DNA. They mixed frog DNA, trying to create a being that could breathe in or out of water. They used a liberal dose of cobra DNA, hoping to incorporate the almost hypnotic effect they had over small prey. They used reptile DNA because they wanted their creatures to be long-wearing, and they used platypus DNA because those scientists thought platypi were just freaking hysterical, and we already established that they were a little cracked in the head.

Most of these experimental creatures never reached maturity. This genetic hodgepodge seemed destined to terminate in vitro and most of the attempts were nothing more than grotesque monsters floating in artistically lit jars of formaldehyde.

But one attempt had lived. In a manner of speaking.

It was a vicious creature from the day it reached maturity and immediately ripped out the throat of the nearest lab tech (fortunately an undergrad, and therefore no great loss) and devoured his brain and most of his internal organs before security managed to restrain it.

The creature wasn't even remotely human. It was small, with a bright yellowish tinge to its thick skin and small blue horns that protected its exposed, oozing brain. It was carnivorous, preferring to feast on human flesh but willing to settle for Philly Steak Sandwiches if mortal innards weren't readily available. It was able to hypnotize a victim just be staring into their eyes, and it would control its prey before it killed them. And the strangest part of all was that it strongly resembled a rubber ducky.

Oh, and it was undead. At least they thought it was undead. It had no heartbeat or body temperature, and every time they tried to exterminate the little bugger, it just sprang back to life, meaner and creepier than ever, so the scientists figured they might as well call it undead. It sounded cooler that way.

The zombie duck lived in captivity in the darkest corners on Manticore's basement until one day when the orderly who brought in its daily cheesesteak dropped his guard for a moment. While his attention was diverted, the zombie duck hypnotized him and then lunged at his neck, chewed through his throat, climbed inside and devoured just enough of the orderly's internal organs to make room against his brain stem. The duck then attached himself to the stem, using his psychic powers to animate and control the host body and use it for his own evil bidding.

Animating the dead, stolen body, the zombie duck carefully packed his cheesesteak into a to-go bag and walked out of Manticore forever.

**The Ominous Setup**

It was a dark and stormy night in Seattle, which wasn't unusual. Seattle has lots of dark and stormy moments. What was unusual was the man walking down the middle of the street, oblivious to the rain, feet dragging heavily and eyes strangely vacant. If anyone had bothered to look closely at this eerie figure, they might have noticed some blood seeped into the man's collar, or maybe the gaping hole in the back of his neck, or maybe even the hint of what looked remarkably like the tail end of a rubber duck peeking out through the open, oozing wound. But since anybody who got that close would have probably gotten trapped in the man's hypnotic gaze and promptly eaten, it's a good thing nobody cared to cross the street to take a second look.

The corpse wandered the streets, hungrily looking for a new victim or a sandwich shop, when it stopped in front of an electronics store. Audio-visual devices didn't usually interest the creature since it was generally more focused on eating human flesh and animating dead bodies to get around. Also, it believed that too much TV rotted a person's brain. That night, however, something in the window caught his attention. Every TV set suddenly showed the same image: a set of eyes. He broke the window and turned up the sound on the nearest set. "_This is a Streaming Freedom Video. The cable hack will last exactly 60 seconds. It cannot be traced, it cannot be stopped, and it is the only free voice left in the city_."

An evil plan began to form in the zombie duck's squeaky little brain. Those eyes, staring out all across the city, broadcasting on every station…if he had power like that, he could enslave the entire city. Zombie duck wanted to control those eyes. He would find this Eyes Only, eat his brain, and use his reanimated corpse to hypnotize every man, woman, and child in Seattle. It would be a zombie apocalypse, and it would be totally freakin' awesome!

**The Rapidly Progressing Plot Point**

Zombie duck spent months laying out an elaborate trap for Eyes Only. He had eaten the brains of every corrupt politician, crooked cop, and drug dealer he could find, looking for information. When that didn't work, he started eating the brains of reporters and journalists, looking for a connection. There were some clues in there, but nothing zombie duck could use. He finally found a link after munching down on a cop's brain and finding a contact number to a source close to Eyes Only. Using the cop's body, he made a phone call and set the gears of his trap in motion.

**The Somewhat Exciting Action Sequence**

Zombie Duck was waiting in the warehouse, the file he left out as bait sitting in the middle of the room. A dark haired girl walked into the light, picking up the file and leafing through it, looking for the promised information. Zombie duck used his host body to jump the girl, tackling her to the ground and pinning her under the weight of the dead cop he was still dragging around. He forced her to the floor and was just about to sink his teeth into the back of her neck so he could chew through, eat her brain, and find Eyes Only when he saw her barcode.

A fellow transgenic, x-5 judging by the look of it...

Zombie duck hesitated just long enough that the dark haired girl was able to jump up, kicking the zombie host back. Her foot sunk into his gut, and instead of the grunt she would have expected to hear from a man of that size, there was a strange noise. If she didn't know better, she would have thought it was a high-pitched squeak.

Well, that was different. In addition to squeaking, the dark haired transgenic also noticed that the guy she was fighting was ice cold and his eyes were blank and hazy. He smelled pretty dead too. She knew then that she was dealing with a zombie and all the undead field training that she had studied back at Manticore (thank goodness for a liberal arts education!) had finally paid off. She attacked the zombie with surprising force for somebody who only weighed 103 lbs., knocking him to the ground and pulling on the neck until it detached from the body with a sickening ripping sound.

She held the decapitated zombie head in the air and noticed something hanging from the base of the brain stem. If she didn't know better, she would have sworn that it was a rubber ducky, which was probably the strangest thing she had seen all day. Maybe two days. She pulled it from the decapitated head, shoved it into a plastic bag, and left the warehouse to go find some wet wipes.

**The Gratuitous Sex Which Follows the Gratuitous Violence Scene**

Max sat in Logan's apartment, staring at the small yellow creature she had brought back with her. She had already taken a shower, using the day old brain juice in her hair and under her nails as an excuse to walk around Logan's place in a towel again, and now they were both sitting at the table, poking at zombie duck with a set of BBQ tongs.

"It's sort of cute," Logan remarked. "Reminds me of one of those novelty duck toys for the bath. I once saw a toy like this getting its picture taken by a bunch of crazy women up in that restaurant that used to be on top of the Space Needle."

"Yeah," Max agreed. "It would be kinda funny…you know, if I hadn't just pulled it out of a rotting zombie skull."

"Good point. Well, I suppose we should kill it. Any ideas on how to do that?"

Just then Logan's doorbell rang. Poor, demented Mrs. Moreno had gotten lost again, unable to figure out why it was so hard to find her apartment that for some reason was on the floor above the penthouse. Zombie duck seized his one opportunity for escape and launched himself at the old woman's throat, chewing into her brain and taking over her corpse. He turned the old woman's eyes onto Max and Logan, hypnotizing them and convincing them that they needed to have raucous, passionate, frantic and immediate sex on Logan's kitchen counter. While they were busy ripping each other's clothes off, the zombie duck snuck away in the old lady's body, his plans for an apocalypse temporarily foiled.

**The Absurd and Anti-Climatic Conclusion**

Unfortunately for zombie duck, Max and Logan's booty call was his last hypnotic command because he hadn't realized that Mrs. Moreno's glaucoma meds would interfere with his power to control people with his eyes, which really sucked and cut down on the killing sprees. It was hard work to have to kill a guy without the benefits of psychic powers of evil persuasion, and zombie duck was sort of a lazy son of a bitch.

He did still enjoy ripping bodies open though, so one day he crawled into the skull of some guy whose nickname he liked and went to work as a medical examiner for NCIS, where he could wallow in guts all day without having to feel bad about it, and he saved being evil mostly for his off hours.

And they all lived happily ever after, except for everyone who died a horrible and painful death.

The End

_Maybe this will teach you to ask for generic ML angst and twu wuv next time, huh ITL?_

_If you don't stop to leave a review, zombie ducky will kill you in your sleep and devour your brain. Just thought I should warn you._


End file.
